《Hoarding Bitcoin》 Chapter 4:Impulse, Loneliness, Boredom, and Contradiction

If you agree with the viewpoints in the previous three articles, you may have already made up your mind to hoard Bitcoin. Judging from past experience, the vast majority of people have not succeeded. External factors are certainly important, such as needing money urgently due to an unexpected event. However, the decisive factor is still your mentality.
You might think that what you need to overcome most is fear, but it’s not, because you are already prepared for the drastic fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin.

Impulse

The huge fluctuations in Bitcoin prices and the often tenfold or hundredfold increases in altcoin prices can frequently give us the impulse to jump in and speculate. This is a very, very irrational impulse, but we often find it hard to resist.
People are naturally weak against gambling, fully aware that it’s a zero-sum or negative-sum game, yet often can’t help going all in, with many thus losing everything they have.
Speculating on altcoins is like buying lottery tickets; you could multiply your money tenfold, a hundredfold, or even a thousandfold, but the chances are extremely low. A few coins do indeed yield high returns, but most will eventually become worthless. And if you take it seriously, you lose; the ‘value coins’ you believe in don’t rise, while the worthless ones soar. This is what they call ‘market cap management.’
Trading with leverage is like betting on highs and lows; you could win tenfold or a hundredfold, or lose everything. I don’t deny that there might be some skill involved, but it’s clearly a zero-sum or negative-sum game; your gains are inevitably someone else’s losses.
Hoarding Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a positive-sum game; everyone profits as Bitcoin grows and develops. Over the past decade, Bitcoin has never let down anyone who believed in it.
However, I am also very aware that all this reasoning is useless; gambling has a long history, and despite many bloody lessons, it remains extremely popular. The gambling instinct is innate in people, and we often find it hard to fight against it.
My strategy is not to keep money or coins in the exchange, and to hide my private key a little deeper. Whenever the market is hot and I feel the impulse, I can’t immediately access my private key; by the time I can, the market has passed, and rationality prevails again.

Loneliness

Those who believe in Bitcoin are lonely.
You’ve fallen for a girl who is beautiful, gentle, and kind, but she dresses avant-garde and is unconventional, so others think she has a bad character, and your family opposes your relationship. What should you do?
You trust your own judgment, firmly believing that you are right and others are wrong. Yet, at the same time, you find that no one seriously listens to reason, and you stand opposed to everyone. Occasionally, well-meaning people try to persuade you to turn back, claiming it’s for your own good. What should you do?
I’ve never mentioned Bitcoin to the people around me; it’s like an underground romance, a torment. What’s more tormenting is that for three long years, no one around me mentioned Bitcoin either.
I lead a double life. On one hand, I’m very active online, learning a lot about Bitcoin-related technology, writing many articles; on the other hand, I live in a circle completely devoid of Bitcoin, and I’m also very active there.
I often imagine what Satoshi Nakamoto’s life is like. On one hand, he is a god-like presence online; on the other hand, in his social circle, probably no one knows he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
I can even feel your pain; even if you highly appreciate my articles, you can’t like or share them because you don’t want your circle of friends to know your secret of hoarding coins.
When many people feel lonely, they go to various cryptocurrency gatherings. But trust me, it’s useless. You’ll find that, just like outside the circle, there are very few true believers inside.
In 2017, there were actually a couple of times when others brought up Bitcoin in front of me. But by then, I had gotten used to the loneliness, even started to enjoy it.
One time was at a business meeting. After it ended, during casual conversation, the topic somehow turned to foreign exchange controls. Mr. C, around 50, a greasy middle-aged man and chairman of a chain of hotels, mentioned Bitcoin. A few others seemed interested and started asking questions. I pretended to be clueless. Mr. C enthusiastically told everyone that it’s something worth buying a little of, as it’s going up and probably will continue to rise.
Another time was at a private dinner, where Mr. G, who manages a private equity fund, was talking about his recent interest in machine learning and quantitative trading. He mentioned that many of his peers were trading digital currencies.
As they spoke, I listened intently. I found their understanding to be very superficial, some even wrong, but I couldn’t correct them. They could never imagine that I was the one who understood it all the deepest.
But that feeling was super good, because even a fool could tell that the bull market had really arrived; I hurried home to buy a couple more coins, heh.
As for loneliness, my advice is to write like crazy. There are things you want to tell others, but they don’t accept them, and it’s uncomfortable to hold it in, so write it all down. When you get used to loneliness, you’ll find that not only has your thinking matured, but your writing has improved as well.

Boredom

The act of hoarding Bitcoin is extremely boring in itself.

You like a girl, but you have to leave her aside and do nothing. This is against human nature!

You love Bitcoin and feel that you must do something. I understand this feeling. However, please believe me, the act of hoarding coins itself has already made a huge contribution to the Bitcoin network.

Only if you believe in the decentralization of Bitcoin, the security of Bitcoin, and the unlimited future of Bitcoin, can you possibly hoard coins for a long time, and can you possibly store the wealth you have worked hard to earn on that ‘illusory’ string of private key characters of Bitcoin.

This behavior of yours, your attitude towards Bitcoin, has far exceeded your attitude towards your lover. How many people are willing to give the wealth they have worked hard to earn, without complaint or regret, to their lover?

So, you really don’t need to do anything else. If you really feel bored, go work out or take care of your health, don’t wait until you’re financially free and your body is also gone. If you have girl model, you can only look at them, what’s the point then?”

Contradiction

This is a complex feeling where you hope for Bitcoin to rise in value, yet also wish for it to fall.

I once hoped to stop checking the market, so I deleted all the Bitcoin market-related apps. However, I found that I simply couldn’t do it, as I could still see the market prices on my phone or computer’s web browser.

For hoarding Bitcoin, a rise in price is useless. If you’re hoarding for the long term and not planning to sell, any rise is just ‘unrealized gain’. But, a rise means that your persistence is correct, which is always pleasing.

Conversely, although a drop in price can be depressing, it presents an opportunity to buy the dip and increase your holdings significantly.

People become somewhat split. This is normal; just look at some of the old-timers in the crypto community. They run out to sing praises one moment and to predict doom the next, getting blasted by their followers.

My personal judgment is that most of their coins are hoarded and not moving, they are neither long nor short. The reason they flip-flop is that they themselves are unclear whether they want the price to rise or fall; they are very conflicted.

I don’t know how to resolve this contradiction because I am still conflicted myself. However, it seems to be a small issue, as it hasn’t affected my hoarding of coins.

---

We will go through psychological tests: impulse, loneliness, boredom, and contradiction. But those that don’t defeat us will ultimately help us grow, just as those that don’t defeat Bitcoin will make it stronger.

Years have passed, and I have grown with Bitcoin. If you have been reading my articles, you might feel the changes in the way of thinking, writing style, and even my personality has become more and more gentle.”